“Promise to behave?” said the male orderly. He eyed me like a wild African lion.

Some lion. I could barely keep my eyelids at half mast. I felt like asking who’d stuck the tranquilizer dart in my reincarnated ass.

Instead, I raised a point of law. “Restraint is allowed only if necessary.” My words came out thick and slurred, but the orderly understood, and he began tussling with my leather restraints, freeing first my ankles, then my wrists.

The instant he was done, he stepped back smartly, which caused me to suspect that he’d been on duty whenever it was that they’d brought me in. It was either that or else he’d simply heard the story.

I’ll bet it’s a doozie, I thought, smirking. I stretched my limbs far and wide, not because I felt stiff—my body was, in fact, numb all over—but simply because I could.

I noticed that my skin had been chafed red at all four spots where I’d been bound. Yep, I’ll bet that story’s a doozie.

Not that I was in any hurry to hear it. The first thing to do was to come alive again. I felt more like inorganic than organic matter, less a lion and more a large rock or a slab of timber. That, I knew from experience, was what a potent cocktail of sedatives and anti-psychotics could do to a person.

“I want to sit up,” I said. I wuh ztup.

With the bed control, the orderly gradually raised me into a sitting up position. Then he volunteered to fetch my lunch and, without an okay from me, rushed from the room. The door to my private, windowless cell, euphemistically known as a seclusion room, locked with a soft electronic buzz. The orderly returned so incredibly fast with a plate of hot food that the only explanation possible was that I’d dozed off sitting up. My molded plastic tray had turkey slices in gravy with mashed potatoes and a mix of peas and carrots. Yet the steamy sight of food failed to stimulate my appetite, and my sense of smell was still too deadened to appreciate the aroma.

The orderly cajoled me into eating a bite of turkey, then departed. I forked a hot glob of mashed potatoes into my mouth.

The next thing I knew, I was waking from slumber again, still sitting up in bed, with my mouth hanging open in mid chew. The glob of mashed potatoes on my tongue had turned ice cold, and it tasted revolting. I spit it out, onto my food tray, just as the orderly returned.

Behind the orderly came a graying African-American woman in a maroon pant suit, the jacket splaying over a pair of pillow-size hips. She had the detached air of someone who’d just happened to wander into the room. Some doctors are like that.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Doctor Woods. And your name is?”

“Argus Ward.”

She slipped on a pair of reading glasses she kept in her hair and checked her clipboard, as if to see if I really knew my own name. It occurred to me that she couldn’t hang those glasses on a chain around her neck. For safety reasons.

“I’m a security consultant,” I said for extra points.

“That’s right,” she said, raising her head. “Tell me, Mister Ward, do you know where you are?”

“Not precisely,” I said. “Does my wife?”

She consulted her clipboard again. “Now just who is your wife, Mister Ward?”

“Sarah,” I said.

The doctor gave a nod at her clipboard, agreeing with me. Then she dropped it to her side, resting it against one of her amply padded hips, and studied me with the same cold intensity my daughter reserves for ants.

“Yes,” Doctor Woods said, “your wife knows you’re here. In the Maximum-Security Psychiatric Unit of the District of Columbia Correctional Complex. Last night, the District police took you into custody and placed you under arrest. The court remanded you here for the purpose of psychiatric assistance and evaluation.”

“Why was I arrested?”

“You’ve been charged with murder.”

I didn’t say anything, didn’t move, didn’t blink. I felt more inorganic than ever.

Yet I was not without thoughts. The most certain being that John Helms was dead.

Next Chapter: Chapter Twelve